KiaSA Writing Style Analyser

The “I Write Like” analyser has been spreading like wildfire recently, a web page that takes a text sample and with uncanny machine precision determines that you write like one of 50 authors including James Joyce, H. P. Lovecraft, P. G. Wodehouse or, in particularly insulting cases, Dan Brown. Doubt has been raised over the pin-point accuracy of the Bayesian classifier behind it, though, so KiaSA Industries have devoted a vast amount of effort and resources to create a far more sophisticated algorithm, the most accurate writing style analysis service in the known universe:

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Sorry, there’s no code to paste into your blog if you want a badge. You can make your own, though, try the PrtScrn button and MS Paint.

I saw this a week or two ago and found that one of my “in progress” articles apparently means I write like… some dude I can’t remember, and can’t get again (though I remember being wholly unimpressed when I did a bit of research on him), since I just pasted the *same* text with very minor edits into the analyzer, and now it’s calling me H.P. Lovecraft.

I’ve never read Lovecraft (gasp!), so I’m not sure how accurate that is… but I suspect the analyzer is triggering on a few key words/acronyms or phrases, rather than really doing any sort of useful contextual analysis.

Another article (Apple Picking) garnered an “Arthur Clarke” (sans the “C.”?), and yet another (The Old World of Warcraft) earned me a “Cory Doctorow”.

Overall, I’m vaguely insulted, but I’ll take the Clarke happily.

Sente has a good article up citing his results, and a link to an article on the guts of the analyzer.